Dean Maggs joined the Army JAG Corps as a reserve officer in 1990, serving in several key positions in Fort Campbell in Kentucky and Fort Monroe in Virginia. In 2007, he was appointed reserve associate appellate judge in the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals—the highest court in the U.S. Army Reserve—and will remain in the position until July 2014. Dean Maggs has reviewed 231 criminal cases and served as lead judge for 82 cases.

Since 1993, Dean Maggs has contributed to the GW Law School as a faculty member, senior associate dean for academic affairs and co-director of the National Security and U.S. Foreign Relations Law Program. He served a prior term as interim dean before assuming the position again this year. Dean Maggs also worked as a law clerk for the late Judge Joseph T. Sneed of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for U.S. Supreme Court Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.

Dean Maggs’s promotion to colonel became effective Jan. 1; however, the celebration ceremony was delayed to accommodate schedules. “I am honored to be promoted, but nothing will be different for me,” said Dean Maggs.

At the event, Major General and Deputy Judge Advocate General Clyde J. Tate honored Dean Maggs, describing him as a “sterling representative for the Army and the military JAG Corps.”

The event was attended by Dean Maggs’s friends, family and colleagues, including Justice Thomas, who is a professorial lecturer in law at GW, and Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Randall Ray Rader, J.D. ’78.

“It just shows that good people win sometimes,” said Justice Thomas. “He leaves people with one overriding thought— ‘I want to be like you.’”